Esther Forbes

"We give all we have, lives, property, safety, skills ... we fight, we die, for a simple thing. Only that a man can stand up."

"Hundreds would die, but not the thing they died for. A man can stand up."

"A man can stand up to anything with a good weapon in his hands. Without it, hes but a dumb beast."

"After that Johnny began to watch himself. For the first time he learned to think before he spoke."

"I knew he could learn — if he didnt get killed first. It was sink or swim for him — and happens hes swimming."

"Human relations never seem to stand completely still. This apple, for instance. It might ripen into something better than it now was, or, unromantically, it might rot away in his pocket."

"Then Johnny saw running down Cambridge road through the bushes on Charlestown Common a scurry of red ants. ... Those red ants were British soldiers. ... You could see the flash of musket fire, too far away to be heard. Fireflies swarming, hardly more than that."

"How old are you, Johnny?" she asked. "Sixteen." "And whats that — a boy or a man?" He laughed. "A boy in time of peace and a man in time of war."

"Most American heroes of the Revolutionary period are by now two men, the actual man and the romantic image. Some are even three men—the actual man, the image, and the debunked remains."

"If he still were in England and were the man whom this girl loved, she would probably seek him out — women have almost a genius for anticlimaxes."

"Just like the sun coming up yonder out of the sea, pushing rays of light ahead of it."

"He had never in all his life slept in a bed alone — much less a whole room."